Exploring Universal Basic Income
Exploring Universal Basic Income

Author: Ugo Gentilini

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2019-11-25

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 1464815119

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Universal basic income (UBI) is emerging as one of the most hotly debated issues in development and social protection policy. But what are the features of UBI? What is it meant to achieve? How do we know, and what don’t we know, about its performance? What does it take to implement it in practice? Drawing from global evidence, literature, and survey data, this volume provides a framework to elucidate issues and trade-offs in UBI with a view to help inform choices around its appropriateness and feasibility in different contexts. Specifically, the book examines how UBI differs from or complements other social assistance programs in terms of objectives, coverage, incidence, adequacy, incentives, effects on poverty and inequality, financing, political economy, and implementation. It also reviews past and current country experiences, surveys the full range of existing policy proposals, provides original results from micro†“tax benefit simulations, and sets out a range of considerations around the analytics and practice of UBI.

From Evidence to Action
From Evidence to Action

Author: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.

Published: 2018-10-18

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 9251089817

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Cash transfers have become a key social protection tool in developing countries and have expanded dramatically in the last two decades. However, the impacts of cash transfers programmes, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, have not been substantially documented. This book presents a detailed overview of the impact evaluations of these programmes, carried out by the Transfer Project and FAO’s From Protection to Production project. The 14 chapters include a review of eight country case studies: Kenya, Ghana, Ethiopia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Malawi, South Africa, as well as a description of the innovative research methodologies, political economy issues and good practices to design cash transfer programmes. The key objective of the book is to enhance the understanding of these development programmes, how they lead to a broad range of social and productive impacts and also of the role of programme evaluation in the process of developing policies and implementing programmes.

Conditional Cash Transfers
Conditional Cash Transfers

Author: Ariel Fiszbein

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2009-02-09

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 0821373536

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Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs aim to reduce poverty by making welfare programs conditional upon the receivers' actions. That is, the government only transfers the money to persons who meet certain criteria. These criteria may include enrolling children into public schools, getting regular check-ups at the doctor's office, receiving vaccinations, or the like. They have been hailed as a way of reducing inequality and helping households break out of a vicious cycle whereby poverty is transmitted from one generation to another. Do these and other claims make sense? Are they supported by the available empirical evidence? This volume seeks to answer these and other related questions. Specifically, it lays out a conceptual framework for thinking about the economic rationale for CCTs; it reviews the very rich evidence that has accumulated on CCTs; it discusses how the conceptual framework and the evidence on impacts should inform the design of CCT programs in practice; and it discusses how CCTs fit in the context of broader social policies. The authors show that there is considerable evidence that CCTs have improved the lives of poor people and argue that conditional cash transfers have been an effective way of redistributing income to the poor. They also recognize that even the best-designed and managed CCT cannot fulfill all of the needs of a comprehensive social protection system. They therefore need to be complemented with other interventions, such as workfare or employment programs, and social pensions.

Give People Money
Give People Money

Author: Annie Lowrey

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2018-07-10

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 1524758787

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A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Shortlisted for the 2018 FT & McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award A brilliantly reported, global look at universal basic income—a stipend given to every citizen—and why it might be necessary in an age of rising inequality, persistent poverty, and dazzling technology. Imagine if every month the government deposited $1,000 into your bank account, with nothing expected in return. It sounds crazy. But it has become one of the most influential and hotly debated policy ideas of our time. Futurists, radicals, libertarians, socialists, union representatives, feminists, conservatives, Bernie supporters, development economists, child-care workers, welfare recipients, and politicians from India to Finland to Canada to Mexico—all are talking about UBI. In this sparkling and provocative book, economics writer Annie Lowrey examines the UBI movement from many angles. She travels to Kenya to see how a UBI is lifting the poorest people on earth out of destitution, India to see how inefficient government programs are failing the poor, South Korea to interrogate UBI’s intellectual pedigree, and Silicon Valley to meet the tech titans financing UBI pilots in expectation of a world with advanced artificial intelligence and little need for human labor. Lowrey explores the potential of such a sweeping policy and the challenges the movement faces, among them contradictory aims, uncomfortable costs, and, most powerfully, the entrenched belief that no one should get something for nothing. In the end, she shows how this arcane policy has the potential to solve some of our most intractable economic problems, while offering a new vision of citizenship and a firmer foundation for our society in this age of turbulence and marvels.

In the Balance
In the Balance

Author: Hein Marais

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2022-07

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 1776147723

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As jobs disappear and wages flatline, paid work is an increasingly fragile basis for dignified life. This predicament, deepened by the COVID-19 pandemic, is sparking urgent debates about alternatives such as a universal basic income (UBI). In this incisive new book, Hein Marais casts the debate about a UBI in the wider context of the dispossessing pressures of capitalism and the turmoil of global warming, pandemics and social upheaval. Marais surveys the meaning, history and appeal of a UBI before even-handedly weighing the case for and against it. The book explores the vexing questions a UBI raises about the relationship of paid work to social rights, about prevailing notions of entitlement and dependency, and about the role of the state in contemporary capitalism. Along with cost estimates for different versions of a basic income in South Africa, it discusses financing options and lays out the social, economic and political implications. Highly topical and distinctive in its approach, In the Balance: The Case for a Universal Basic Income in South Africa and Beyond is the most rounded and up-to-date examination yet of the need and prospects for a UBI in a global South setting such as South Africa.

Economics of Means-Tested Transfer Programs in the United States, Volume I
Economics of Means-Tested Transfer Programs in the United States, Volume I

Author: Robert A. Moffitt

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2016-11-16

Total Pages: 421

ISBN-13: 022637047X

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"These two volumes update the earlier Means-Tested Transfer Programs in the United States with a discussion of the changes in means-tested government programs and the results of new research over the past decade. A number of these programs have seen substantial increases in expenditures, including Medicaid, the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and subsidized housing programs. For each program, the contributors describe its origins and goals, summarize its history and current rules, and discuss recipients' characteristics and the types of benefits they receive."--Publisher's description.

The Short-Term Impact of COVID-19 on Labor Markets, Poverty and Inequality in Brazil
The Short-Term Impact of COVID-19 on Labor Markets, Poverty and Inequality in Brazil

Author: International Monetary Fund

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2021-03-05

Total Pages: 36

ISBN-13: 1513571648

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We document the short-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Brazilian labor market focusing on employment, wages and hours worked using the nationally representative household surveys PNAD-Continua and PNAD COVID. Sectors most susceptible to the shock because they are more contact-intensive and less teleworkable, such as construction, domestic services and hospitality, suffered large job losses and reductions in hours. Given low income workers experienced the largest decline in earnings, extreme poverty and the Gini coefficient based on labor income increased by around 9.2 and 5 percentage points, respectively, due to the immediate shock. The government’s broad based, temporary Emergency Aid transfer program more than offset the labor income losses for the bottom four deciles, however, such that poverty relative to the pre-COVID baseline fell. At a cost of around 4 percent of GDP in 2020 such support is not fiscally sustainable beyond the short-term and ended in late 2020. The challenge will be to avoid a sharp increase in poverty and inequality if the labor market does not pick up sufficiently fast in 2021.

Oil to Cash
Oil to Cash

Author: Todd Moss

Publisher: CGD Books

Published: 2015-06-10

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 1933286695

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Oil to Cash explores one option to help countries with new oil revenue avoid the so-called resource curse: just give the money directly to citizens. A universal, transparent, and regular cash transfer would not only provide a concrete benefit to regular people, but would also create powerful incentives for citizens to hold their government accountable. Oil to Cash details how and where this idea could work and how policymakers can learn from the experiences with cash transfers in places like Mexico, Mongolia, and Alaska.